We Are Saved From the Guilt and Power of Sin By Faith

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Loved ones it is a trick of Satan, reinforced by so many of our dear churches, that has persuaded you and me that Romans 7 is the normal Christian life. It isn't.

The last part of Romans 7 is a great parenthesis describing the situation of a Jew struggling under the law. If you say to me, then how come so many of us who are children of God identify with it – it’s because we're often living under the old covenant. We respect the law, we try to obey it but we cannot obey it. We have had our sins forgiven but we have not been delivered from these sinful natures. We haven't been delivered from our sinful nature because we have never really seen that that's what Christ did for us. When we came to God at the beginning, He said I have given my Son to die for you. We said we don't know why but we believe that and we thank you for your forgiveness. Now God allows these things to come up in our lives so that we'll see why Jesus died for us. He died to deliver us from that old self inside you and me, that makes us get irritable and angry, which makes us disobey God and that makes us eventually fall from our own best ideals.

Loved ones, the glory of the Gospel is that not only are our sins forgiven by faith but our hearts are cleansed by faith. Not only are we free from the guilt of sin by faith. We are saved from the power of sin by faith. The error that you and I make is we think we are saved from the guilt of sin by faith but we're saved from the power of sin by reading good books, or by exercising our will power, or by getting into more Bible study groups, or by getting into a better church. The fact is, we're delivered from the power of sin by the same simple method by which we received the forgiveness of our sins, by faith. By faith that we were crucified with Christ and completely remade. Loved ones you don't have to labor under that sinful nature. That is not the normal Christian life and it is not the right interpretation of scripture.